The smoking scalpel

Joann Coleman, a scrappy lawyer, has been raising questions about the proposed affiliation between UAMS and St. Vincent Infirmary Health. The institutions are exploring a way to combine efforts, but hesitate to use the word "merger" and insist that the public nature of one institution and the Catholic nature of the other will not be compromised.

Coleman was on hand with a tape recorder at a meeting Monday night of the Hillcrest Residents Association at which incumbent members of the Little Rock Board of Directors appeared.

Coleman recorded her questions to Dean Kumpuris, a physician who practices at St. Vincent. He supports the combination, naturally. In the course of fielding concerns about the future of War Memorial Park (it's safe, Kumpuris said) and the technology park (it's a wonderful economic development tool and has no relationship to the UAMS/St. Vincent combine other than UAMS' sponsorship, he said), he talked specifically about the med center affiliation in assuring Coleman it wouldn't bleed over into the tech park.

Kumpuris: "All St. Vincent will do is manage the hospital."

Coleman: "It would manage the hospital?"

Kumpuris: "It would manage the university hospital, not the medical school."

Coleman: "It would manage the hospital is what you're telling me."

Kumpuris: "That's right."

That's a more definitive view of the potential arrangement — a study of which has not even been approved yet by the legislature – than either entity has suggested so far. I asked UAMS about it. Spokeswoman Leslie Taylor replied:

"There has been no change in our position. We're not considering a merger or any scenario that would put UAMS services under the governance of another entity."

Taylor said that the Times raised fair questions about the future of many services and tasks should UAMS and St. Vincent work together. A key question as yet untouched by St. Vincent is what sort of activities the Catholic Church, which ultimately must approve the merger, would tolerate from a partner if those services differed from church doctrine. These include patient services such as tubal ligations, vasectomies, emergency treatment for rape, ectopic pregnancies, health-threatening pregnancies, birth control pills and condoms and other devices; in vitro fertilization; research in areas ranging from stem cells to efficacy of birth control methods, and personnel policies, such as collective bargaining and the existing university non-discrimination policy toward gay people. The Catholic Church has been at the fore of efforts nationwide to battle equal rights for gay people. Many questions. So far, not many answers, though Kumpuris seems pretty clear on things.

Most Shared

Next week a series of meetings on the use of technology to tackle global problems will be held in Little Rock by Club de Madrid — a coalition of more than 100 former democratic former presidents and prime ministers from around the world — and the P80 Group, a coalition of large public pension and sovereign wealth funds founded by Prince Charles to combat climate change. The conference will discuss deploying existing technologies to increase access to food, water, energy, clean environment, and medical care.

Plus, recipes from the Times staff.

Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) was on "Capitol View" on KARK, Channel 4, this morning, and among other things that will likely inspire you to yell at your computer screen, he said he expects someone in the legislature to file a bill to do ... something about changing the name of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

So fed up was young Edgar Welch of Salisbury, N.C., that Hillary Clinton was getting away with running a child-sex ring that he grabbed a couple of guns last Sunday, drove 360 miles to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where Clinton was supposed to be holding the kids as sex slaves, and fired his AR-15 into the floor to clear the joint of pizza cravers and conduct his own investigation of the pedophilia syndicate of the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

There is almost nothing real about "reality TV." All but the dullest viewers understand that the dramatic twists and turns on shows like "The Bachelor" or "Celebrity Apprentice" are scripted in advance. More or less like professional wrestling, Donald Trump's previous claim to fame.

Latest in The Insider

Old habits die hard. We may have a new Republican majority in the legislature, but like the old Democratic majority, it still doesn't hurt to have a lawmaker spouse to land a part-time job during the legislative session.

When we first asked Gov. Mike Beebe about the "circuit breaker" idea out of Arizona (automatically opting out of Medicaid expansion if the feds reduce the matching rates in the future), he said it was fine but noted that states can already opt out at any time, an assurance he got in writing from the feds.

An interesting controversy is brewing in Conway Public Schools, periodically a scene of discord as more liberal constituents object to the heavy dose of religion that powerful local churches have tried to inject into the schools, particularly in sex education short on science and long on abstinence.